A brief review of Marvel’s Spider-man
Marvel’s Spider-man, by Insomniac games is a largely inoffensive open world action adventure game starring the titular Spider-man, saving the city of New York and dealing with his job, his relationships, and doing favors for his friend… and it fucking infuriates me.
Nothing about this game is unique or interesting. Everything about it has been stolen from other successful games of the past and present, from the lazy combat system lobotomized from the Batman: Arkham Asylum series, to the design of the open world mechanics so blatantly ripped from every Ubisoft game that they should have reported the robbery.
The only major mechanic that this game can call it’s own is the swinging mechanic, which could theoretically solve the issue many open world games have with travel… if it ever worked. As it stands, the system falls apart at every turn, occasionally stranding the player in a swing with nowhere to go, slamming players into walls or ledges that completely stop their forward momentum, whipping players into directions they couldn’t possibly have predicted, and simply not working at all once you reach a certain altitude.
Combat is a boring slog. With three relevant actions, uninspired enemy types, and a targeting system that the player has NO control over, there simply isn’t enough complexity to keep people engaged… which is a problem when most of the game is combat. Personally, I found myself actively avoiding all of the optional combat encounters in an effort to look for something more interesting to do. The only marginally interesting combat in the game is found with the game’s bosses, but even they are tainted by the slapdash and lazy design philosophy of the game, usually consisting of a brief period of invulnerability until you can hit them with a single sequence of attacks; rinse and repeat, usually in a sequence of three.
The game tries to make up for this laughably mindless combat system with the ‘shotgun’ approach to game design: throw everything but the kitchen sink in and see what sticks. Strangely out of place puzzles, bland stealth, lazy collectibles… none of them work to distract from how uninteresting the rest of the game is, and some of them even highlight it. Many of the collectibles require creative use of the web-slinging mechanic, showcasing the limitations and problems with the system with startling regularity. Meanwhile, the terrible stealth sections put on full display just how horrible and clunky the combat can feel, requiring precision aiming to make the most of the mechanic that the combat engine is simply NOT designed to handle.
I’ve heard some people praise the story as being good, but as of yet I haven’t found out how. There are five separate stories constantly fighting for limelight, none of which are inherently interesting: Peter is trying to keep his job and needs to make rent, Otto Octavius is researching bionic limbs (because of course he is), Peter and MJ are talking about getting back together, Oscorp is up to something, and the ACTUAL plot about Mr. Negative filling the power vacuum left by the Kingpin. That last one SOUNDS interesting, but once you start playing everything about it becomes so obviously telegraphed that they might as well have painted it on the fucking sky.
I’ve written a lot of this just dripping with vitriol, but I feel I should state this last part clearly: This is not a BAD game. It’s just not a good game, either. It’s a Safe game. A game that doesn’t push any boundaries, a game that doesn’t try anything new, a game that blends everything together in an attempt to appeal to everyone… If you designed an algorithm to generate open world games, this would be just another one of the many, many games it would spit out.
